Abstract This paper introduces the concept of Willingness To Accommodate (WTA)—a readiness to adapt communication to foster understanding—in the context of Medical English as a Lingua Franca (MELF) in Hong Kong. Drawing on interviews with ethnic minority patients and local healthcare staff, the study explores how patients often perceive low WTA from staff, leading to perceived exclusion and unfairness. Staff, meanwhile, report that anxiety, low perceived English competence, and institutional constraints contribute to limited engagement. However, when both parties signal their WTA, such as through translanguaging, interactions were perceived as respectful. The paper proposes a WTA framework informed by factors such as perceived competence, anxiety, responsibility, security, and institutional pressures, with translingual practices as observable attempts to display WTA that facilitate (M)ELF interactions. WTA can be used for understanding ELF workplace communication and institutional fairness. The study contributes to existing ELF scholarship which underexplores the predisposition for accommodation and to applied linguistics research by extending Willingness to Communicate theory into professional ELF contexts and highlighting the role of translingual practices in mitigating perceived unfairness.
Abstract Despite growing recognition of emergent bilinguals’ first language (L1) as a resource for vocabulary development, little is known about how L1 use shapes vocabulary-focused interaction during interactive book reading (IBR), particularly when teachers do not share children’s L1s. This study examined vocabulary-focused interaction during small-group IBR with 43 Turkish-Dutch emergent bilinguals across three conditions: an L2-only condition and two conditions in which the adult reader strategically elicited children’s L1 to discuss vocabulary, either without or with support of a translation tool. Forty-five IBR sessions were analysed to examine how interactional space was organized and which communicative acts elicited children’s responses in L1 and L2 of varying length. Results showed that conditions strategically integrating L1 were associated with greater child participation, with L2 production remaining prominent across conditions. Sequential analyses showed that longer L2 responses often followed meaning-making through L2 semantic scaffolding or L1-mediated meaning-making followed by L2 reformulation. These findings highlight how interactional organization and strategic L1 use can create pathways towards more elaborated L2 vocabulary talk during IBR.
Abstract Platform-mediated gig work has been widely studied for its impact on workers’ fatigue and health, using interviews as a key tool for accessing workers’ accounts. However, student-led or course-assignment interviews are rarely examined as interactional events. This study addresses this gap by examining interviews between a Chinese student and ride-hailing drivers in China. Drawing on conversation analysis–informed membership categorization analysis (MCA) and transpositioning, the study examines how the interviewer and drivers position themselves when discussing work intensity and fatigue management. The analysis shows that drivers complicate linear narratives of ‘long hours → tiredness → stimulants’, using accounts of smoking, energy drinks, tea and sleep to calibrate identities as moderate, habitual, or non-stimulant users. It also shows interviews as sites of transpositioning, where the student interviewer moves across hypothesis-testing, candidate-formulating, and affiliative positions, while drivers align with, downplay, or resist the work–health causal link. This study offers implications for teaching and designing academic interviews that open interactional space for platform workers’ identities and health practices.
Abstract This article introduces critical multilingual funds of identity (CMFoI) as a theoretical lens with the potential to help stakeholders who support refugee-background multilingual learners of English (RMLE) better understand their resettlement and language-learning experiences. Toward this goal, we present a theoretical conceptualization of the CMFoI framework, tracing its roots to the funds of identity theory and drawing upon critical theories in applied linguistics as theoretical foundations. To illustrate how this framework can be applied, we utilized data from our ethnographic work with two multilingual Syrian refugee-background adults to examine the complexities of learning English in the resettlement context of the USA. With few exceptions, research that examines the language-learning experiences of adult RMLE has paid little attention to criticality and the identities of RMLE themselves. This study addresses this gap by introducing an asset-based theoretical framework and contributing to an increasingly growing body of literature that challenges deficit-oriented and dehumanizing representations of RMLE in educational practice and research.
Abstract Recent scholarly attention to sentiment analysis has provided researchers with a deeper understanding of how emotions are conveyed in writing and leveraged by academic authors as a persuasive tool. Using the National Research Council Sentiment Lexicons (version 1.0) created by the National Research Council Canada, this study examined specific emotions in research articles (RAs) across four disciplines including literature, education, biology, and computer and information science based on four datasets totaling over three million tokens, aiming to reveal how the emotions are conveyed by authors in academic writing. The results showed that four emotions—trust, anticipation, joy, and surprise—were observed in all the four disciplines while sadness emotion was spotted solely in literature. With the emotion of trust being overwhelmingly prominent, the rest emotions varied significantly across disciplines. The findings contribute to our understanding of emotion strategy applied in academic writing and genre characteristics of RAs.
